Hot sandwiches, particularly breakfast sandwiches, are popular food items, whether ordered in a restaurant or made at home. Hot sandwiches may include multiple different individual filling components layered between two pieces of bread. For example, a hot breakfast sandwich can be made from English muffins, bagels, pancakes, waffles, or the like. The filling components for hot sandwiches vary greatly. Typical filling components of a breakfast sandwich could include ham, bacon, Canadian bacon, sausage patties, vegetables, cheese, egg, and the like and various combinations thereof.
Making hot sandwiches at home, particularly breakfast sandwiches, can be a complicated and time-consuming task. Multiple appliances must be used to separately prepare the individual components, which are then assembled into a complete sandwich. For example, a toaster may be used to toast the English muffin and a microwave may be used to heat pre-cooked ham. A skillet or griddle appliance or the same on a stovetop appliance might be required to cook the egg. The use of multiple appliances causes difficulty coordinating the preparation of the individual components to ensure that all the individual components are done and ready at about the same time, thereby resulting in a complete sandwich in which all components are properly cooked and at desired temperatures. Moreover, the process of cleaning the various appliances adds additional time, frustration, and complexity to the home cooking process.
It has heretofore not been discovered how to create a kitchen appliance that is capable of preparing a hot sandwich whereby all the components are heated, toasted, and/or cooked so that a fully assembled sandwich is presented to a user. The appliance of the following disclosure accomplishes the above and other objectives and overcomes at least the above-described disadvantages of conventional kitchen appliances and methods of making hot sandwiches.